Check the sidebar for "Writing, My Way #1" which focused on "Premise".
To repeat what I wrote in that entry, I am not an expert. In each post, I'll just recount what I do when I write.
Characterization
I may need to re-title this entry as, "Characterization Pt. A". I suspect I won't be able to finish tonight, given that I intend to begin with made-up stories from childhood.
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This is the scan of a picture in my new (birthday gift!) calendar, "Planet Earth: Our Extraordinary World". You are looking at 'Cave Pearl Formations'. from the (or a) Lechuguilla Cave. The calendar doesn't explain where the cave is. If I had to guess, I'd say that it's one of thousands of limestone caves around the world, the same kind of cave in which you find stalagmites and stalagtites trying to join together drip by drip.
Somewhere in all of that there must be several lessons about human characters. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to decide what that lesson is.
Beginning when we were in late elementary school & through junior high, my two best friends Mary and Diana and I used to tell each other stories. We were all enamored of horses, so early stories were often the equivalent of Black Beauty and The Black Stallion fanfic. As we approached puberty, each of us took an interest in various TV "cowboy" stars. I guess it wasn't much of a leap from the horse to the rider. As I've recounted elsewhere, Walter Farley's "The Island Stallion Races" piqued a parallel interest in space aliens and SF. I had already been exposed to Poul Anderson "Time Patrol" stories. The first story I ever put on paper involved time travel investigators.
Our interests fed off of each other in a variety of ways. We still did horse fanfic but added TV western fanfic. One time, we made up a western story so sad that we all got crying. My mom popped into my bedroom to find out what was going on. I don't remember now if we tried to explain or what she thought of what we said. We created a kind of RPG (roleplayig game) in which we were captains of space freighters and trade reps on Solar system planets bargaining for goods and having death-defying adventures. We found the planet G-7 before anyone else. We envisioned flying around in Walter Farley's invisible space ship and wondered what the aliens would have thought of us.
One of our favorite imagination games was bringing historic figures (and, admittedly, the uh, occasional TV Western star) forward in time to visit us. A lot of this was pure teenaged girl self-indulgence--these guys always wanted to dance with us. ;-)
Sometimes though, we took a pretty realistic look at how someone from the circa-1880 American territories would react to a mid-20th century world. What, really, would a cattle-drover make of an electric lamp, much less a car rushing down our suburban streets? Would he be intrigued enough to stay for a while or appalled and insist upon being sent home? What would he miss?
That was the beginning of characterization for Diane and me. (Mary was never bitten by the writing bug like we were.) Diane and I explored every facet of a character's personality, based on a variety of scenarios. We made up stories about Western TV stars' pasts, based on the way they dressed, the way they talked or the way they reacted to other people.
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As you've guessed by now, this give-and-take with my friends is still at the core of my character-creation strategy. After I come up with a premise for a story, i.e. a character with a situation he/she needs to resolve, I begin populating that proto-story with the people who will be caught up in the central plot. The main character or prtagonist, the antagonist ("villain" in some cases who will want to thwart the protagonist as he strives to reach his goal), and all of the other characters with whom they will interact. (Not all stories have mutiple characters of course. Some characters will drag in their own subplots, sometimes totally without my intention or my approval.)
Once I have a quorum of characters from which to work, sometimes even before that, I begin thinking about each character in turn. What does she or he like and hate, and why? Where does she come from? Why does he appear to have developed a nervous habit of fiddling with a pebble or an unlit cigarette? Does the pebble have some personal significance? Is he a smoker who is trying to quit? What did her parents think when she chose to cut or not to cut her hair, against current fashion? Why did she do it?
And I could go on. My point is that I delve into the character in whatever way my imagination takes me. I don't specifically try to think about how the person views their goal in the book or the way in which they will react the first time they and the antagonist share a scene. I am too busy getting to know them and their family, their culture, their beliefs and their quirks. Later, when Antagonist meets up with Protagonist --on the plane that is going to crash in the Poconos in chapter 3--both will react according to their respective personalities.
Now, okay, you can't let these guys entirely have their heads! You do, and what started as a light romance may turn into a government conspiracy thriller--which may not be a problem, depending on whether you've signed a contract for a light romance. Seriously, Cara in "Seabird" pretty much behaved herself, as did two of my three sorcerer villains. The third did something appalling for personal reasons, something I never saw coming in my original premise. I got to know that character better and it was self-evident. Two of Cara's friends traded places when it came to a pivotal scene. Who would have which role became obvious after I learned more about them.
In Earthbow, the manuscript I'm revising now, one character--I can't say who--brought a whole family history into the story which I never anticipated in my original premise. Just because of his/her family history, I had to change a major section in the second half of my book.
And don't get me started when it comes to "G&B" the sequel of Earthbow. Before I reached the fifth chapter, virtually everyone was misbehaving. I had to start over again, and then start over again again before the bunch of them settled down.
To repeat what I wrote at the beginning, I can only speak for how I write. In my case, if the characters aren't constantly evolvng and hitting me with astonishing disclosures about themselves then something is wrong.
Enough for now. I suspect you will be seeing a part two.
In the meantime, please send in your reactions and tell us about your experiences! Have you ever created a character, even though you don't have a story for him or her? Has a character you thought intrinsic to telling your story ever dropped out? Have two characters ever switched places or melted into one? Split into two?
Readers, you are not off the hook! Please tell us about your favorite characters or about characters that just didn't work for you. What did oyu or didn't you like?
Thanks!
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Atrius, who's had a name change since he came into my head is morphing fairly frequently, so I've kind of let him alone in the hope that he'll settle down shortly. After all, I've got less than a month to nail these suckers down.
I love how you describe your characterization process. It's like a houseful of guests that just show up and you have to figure out who they are and why they're in your house. I like it. I may pinch a little of that and add it to my snowflake, if you don't mind.
X
So, your favorite characters are Abbott & Costello?
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I now feel completely unprepared for NaNo!
Okay, calm down. It's just a NaNo novel.
I've had Raven kicking around in my head since 1990. You'd think by now I'd know her like a daughter....
My mistake. Freak out! You should know her better than a daughter, a teenaged daughter anyway. ;-P
Atrius, who's had a name change since he came into my head is morphing fairly frequently, ... I've got less than a month to nail these suckers down.
They'll probably keep morphing the whole time you're writing the book. Well, at least a little bit. So don't expect to have them entirely nailed down before Nov.1.
Try running them through some standard fantasy scenarios--nothing specific to your novel--and see how they react.
I love how you describe your characterization process. It's like a houseful of guests that just show up and you have to figure out who they are and why they're in your house.
Hm. Sounds like Bilbo when a certain wizard and some dwarves started showing up. I hope I have enough cold chicken, pickles and seedcake.
I like it. I may pinch a little of that and add it to my snowflake, if you don't mind.
X
Whatever floats your boat. How do your characters feel about boats by the way?
S
I was flipping back and forth through the channels tonight before working on my SS lesson and caught the end of "The Mummy" - the newer one with Brendan Fraser et al. As I watched the credits roll at the end, the glyphs were popping on and off the screen and I could see sandstone pillars in the background with more hieroglyphics on them. This scene popped into my head from the early part of Raven & Atrius' journey into the second Kingdom, which is a desert Kingdom based loosely on the ancient Middle East. I saw a campsite but missed the conversation that Raven and Atrius had just finished. There was at least one other person there - not Xanthorpe - but they were in the background somewhere. Raven had walked off to the top of a low dune nearby and was looking off into the approaching dusk. I know it's cliche but as the wind blew her hair back (I'm almost seeing Luke on Tattooine in Episode 4) Atrius looks up and realizes he's falling in love with her.
I'm getting all sentimental just thinking about it.
X
Now I have a suggestion. When this happens, I do the following. I don't go over what I "saw" in complete sentences because I probably didn't see it in a left-brain way. Turning it into sentences is going to make some of it evaporate.
Since I always have pen and paper or obviously the computer nearby, before anything can fade, I jot down impressions in the form of scattered words as placeholders for the different elements of the scene. I try not to subvocalize--to the extent that I can avoid it.
Without looking at what I've written so far, I replay the scene. If it's beginning to fade, then that's it and time to convert those fragments to a micro-narrative.
On the rare occasion the scene hasn't yet begun to lose that initial vivid quality, I try to jot down words again.
I use essentially the same strategy to capture dreams. To me, dreams and narrative or descriptive scenes out of the blue are great gifts but they are very fragile. That's why so many people think that they don't dream and/or that they can't write.
Just my opinions of course.
I'm going to take out the dog and hit the sack - it's been a long day and the teenagers should be home soon.
Manana!
X
These little mental gifts are very, very fragile. If I wake up from a dream and as much as think to myself, Wow! What a cool dream!, half of the dream goes with it. And I let it go. I don't beat myself up over it.
The same thing applies with flashes of inspiration in writing. I capture what I can and try to be grateful for the part I captured rather than wringing my hands over the stuff that evaporated while I was nailing down the other stuff.
As, Joanne, Fearless Leader of my writing group knows we're going to lose bunches in translation. That's why she named our group, Written Remains. We're blessed with the initial inspiration and then we have to struggle to get it in a form in which we can communicate to others. When the struggle is over, what is written is all that remains.
X, you have a great scene that didn't exist 24 hours ago! That was a true gift, with that third person that you don't even know who it is yet. Way cool! Hurrah and Hallelujah!
Edited at 2008-10-04 04:03 am (UTC)
During the day, when these sorts of ideas pop into my head, I'm usually driving and can't do anything, eventually losing the thread. this one was fully formed and I believe I captured most of it. A lot of this "should" be easier to flesh out since Nance & I spent 10 years in "Arabia".
I'm waiting for more...
Thanks for the encouragement!
X
Three and a half words:
voice-activated tape recorder.
I've never done this but it might be useful.
As for dreams and being incoherent when waking up, let the mental images and other sensations replay in your mind, while suppressing the urge to think in words. I am convinced that words destroy virtually all memory of dreams.
S
Re characters getting into our world: Andrew Greeley wrote a fantasy novel called "The God Game". The narrator/main character (arguably Greeley himself) is beta testing a new fantasy game when lightning strikes his house. Next thing he knows, characters from the game are showing up at his house. Why? Well, some of them think that he's God.